Ancestors

Written by Wim🧮 on 2025-01-14 at 13:04

The real problem with the current AI hype is not "AI" in itself but what it is causing:

• The hype creates an expectation of huge growth in demand. Data centre companies have to start building capacity before this demand is realised, even if it never realises. As a result, data centre capacity is being built up right now at an unprecedented scale.
• This requires electricity generators to provision capacity for those future data centres, even if they are never used. (1/5)

[#]FrugalComputing

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Written by Wim🧮 on 2025-01-14 at 13:05

• This in turn means electricity generators are not phasing out fossil fuel generation as they want to maximise generation capacity to maximise future profits. And so global emissions from electricity generation are not decreasing at all, quite to the contrary: new fossil fuel powered electricity plants are being developed as a result and mothballed ones are brought back on line. (2/5)

[#]FrugalComputing

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Written by Wim🧮 on 2025-01-14 at 13:05

To put some figures on this: the current global data centre capacity is 55GW, which means 482 TWh/year. Global electricity generation is 30,000 TWh/y. Production of chips for data centres is currently around 21 TWh/y.

Suppose this grows by 10x in ten years (that is about 25% per year and is within current projections). Then we get 4820 TWh for the data centres and 210 for the chips so 5000 TWh or an extra 2.4 GtCO2e (on a total global CO2 budget of 12 GtCO2e). (3/5)

[#]FrugalComputing

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Written by Thomas Fricke (he/him) on 2025-01-14 at 16:05

@wim_v12e

Thanks for calculations!

Do have a reference?

I have connected the numbers with reality. There is a big gap on all resources needed.

https://thomasfricke.de/38c3.pdf

Talk is here

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-resource-consumption-of-ai-degrow-or-die

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Written by Tom Stoneham on 2025-01-14 at 16:44

@thomasfricke @wim_v12e

I too would love a source for the numbers. I haven't been able to find anything as useful as that for global figures (and do these include China?).

While I find them credible, I can't stick them on a slide without a reference 😀

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Toot

Written by Wim🧮 on 2025-01-14 at 16:55

I'm writing a blog article about this at the moment, it will have references.

@tomstoneham

@thomasfricke

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Descendants

Written by Tom Stoneham on 2025-01-14 at 19:11

@wim_v12e @thomasfricke

Brilliant. Thank-you

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